THE GREAT SAGE AND scholar of early Islam, al-Hasan al-Basri, once remarked: هِمَّةُ الْعُلَمَاءِ الرِّعَايَةُ وَهِمَّةُ السُّفَهَاءِ الرِّوَايَةُ - ‘The concern of the scholar is to cultivate, the concern of the foolish is to [merely] narrate.’1 One hadith foretells: ‘There shall come upon people years of deceit in which the liar will be believed, the…